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Self-Sacrificial Leadership and Employee Behaviours: An Examination of the Role of Organizational Social Capital

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Abstract

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines a mechanism, namely organizational social capital (OSC), through which self-sacrificial leadership is related to two types of employee behaviours: organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) and counterproductive behaviours (CPBs). The results of two different studies (a field study and an experimental study) in Egypt showed that self-sacrificial leadership is positively related to OSC which, in turn, is positively related to OCBs and negatively related to CPBs. Overall, the findings suggest that self-sacrificial leaders are more likely to achieve desirable employee behaviours through improving the quality of social relationships among employees.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Ahmed Mohammed Sayed Mostafa

  2. Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Paul A. Bottomley

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  1. Ahmed Mohammed Sayed Mostafa
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Correspondence to Ahmed Mohammed Sayed Mostafa.

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All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Mostafa, A.M.S., Bottomley, P.A. Self-Sacrificial Leadership and Employee Behaviours: An Examination of the Role of Organizational Social Capital. J Bus Ethics 161, 641–652 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3964-5

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